(Damien POV)
The cemetery lay on the north slope of Blackspire's outer ridge — a quiet shelf of land between the keep's shadow and the pine forest. No grand mausoleums. No carved angels. Just simple stones — some upright, some flat, some barely more than river rocks smoothed by rain and time. Wildflowers had begun to push through the grass again; purple starwort and white yarrow nodding in the late-afternoon wind.
I walked the rows alone.
No guards. No shadows trailing me like obedient dogs. Just boots on soft earth and the low rustle of pine needles overhead.
I stopped first at the oldest markers — ones that predated me. Men and women who had died under my father's rule, then mine. Names I had never learned. Faces I had never mourned. I knelt at the first row anyway. Pressed my palm to the cold stone of the nearest grave.
"I'm sorry," I said — voice low, swallowed by the wind. "You served a name that became a curse. I let it happen."
No answer.
Only the wind.
I moved on.
